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The New Link Building Survey 2014 - Results

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Many of you may have seen Skyrocket SEO's Link Building Survey results that we published here on Moz around this same time last year. The reception was fantastic, so we decided to push ahead with turning this into an annual series to see how this strand of the industry is developing and evolving over time.

Firstly, "link building"...

Yep, we've not changed the name to a "content marketing survey" or "inbound link acquisition survey;" we still feel link building is a vital part of an SEOs arsenal of tactics, and therefore it deserves its own survey.

As a company we're investing just as much in link building for our clients (granted, we've adapted what we are doing), but the fact remains that if you want to score big with decent organic search visibility then you need links.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to the details:

Who took the survey?

A massive thank you to the 315 or so people who took the survey. That number is slightly down from last year, which I feel is partly due to fewer people considering link building to be a part of their day-to-day roles. I'd argue that's a missed opportunity, and this year we had a few duplicate entries and submissions that needed a bit of tidying up, so we trimmed it back to these 315 submissions.

The makeup of the respondents was broadly similar to last year, as expected, although based on user feedback from our inaugural survey, we added a few more categories for respondents to self-classify—so it is hard to make specific comparisons.

How much does your company spend on link building per month?

In the 2013 survey, 10% of respondents said their company spent $50k+ per month on link building, so it appears that the upper limit to link building spend may have decreased slightly across the industry.

That being said, there now appears to be a much larger number of companies in the $10-$50k per month bracket when you compare this year's 37% with last year's 11%.

I would attribute the changes year-on-year to two factors;

Reclassification of the term "link building:" Many companies have shifted budget that they would previously classified as link building budget into content projects that more than likely still have an impact on link building efforts.

Recognition of opportunity: Based on our own experiences we see a number of website owners and businesses pushing harder with their content promotion and link building as they recognise an opportunity to invest when their competitors are running scared.

Warren Buffett once said "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." Based on conversations alone that I've had with a wide range of businesses, many are now fearful when it comes to building links. In fact, we gathered some data later in the survey that revealed that one of the biggest challenges people face is not knowing which links will help and which will harm them. Google's widespread action against websites (and dare I say it webmaster propaganda) has had a dramatic impact on some people to the point of paralysis.

There are clear opportunities that, with a sound strategy, can be seized in today's market.

You can
build links like it's 1999 for a microsite or second level property, keep it super-clean and identify link opportunities that would be valuable irrespective of Google, or somewhere in between those extremes. The fact is the links still form the backbone of the internet and of Google's algorithm and that isn't going to change for a very long time.

What percentage of your overall SEO budget is allocated toward building links?

Thanks to
John-Henry Scherck for this one as he made the suggestion following the 2013 survey that having data on the percentage would be really interesting. Looking back we don't have a point of comparison but not of course moving forward we will have so we should get a clearer picture of whether online marketing budgets are just increasing in general (and therefore link building gets allocated the same percentage but of a bigger pie) or whether folks are seeing the value from building links and therefore allocating a larger percentage of the same sized pie to link building activities.

Would you say you've increased or decreased your spend on link building over the past 12 months?

This aligns with our data on more people entering the $10-$50k per month investment bracket this year:

Why the increase/decrease in spending?

We asked people why they decided to increase or decrease their spending on link building over the past 12 months.

Responses could be categorized into the following areas:

Common reason for increases:

Increased costs related to moving away from older style and often "cheaper" link building

Increased costs related to production/creativity

Good links are just as important as ever; links still move the needle in terms of search engine visibility and performance therefore it makes sense to increase investment in this area.

Common reasons for decreases:

Moving link building budget into content marketing projects (to be fair, this budget will probably indirectly fund link acquisition of some kind even if it is seen as a secondary goal for the content campaign.)

We wanted to scale back and assess the impact that Google's manual actions etc have on our website.

In the next 12 months, will you look to increase or decrease your spend on link building?

Why the planned increase/decrease in spending?

Link building continues to get more expensive

To raise the bar on existing efforts, and to beat competitors with increasingly sophisticated content assets

Unsure where to invest/which links are working so concentrating budget into other activities.

Which link building tactics do you utilise most often?

(Numbers listed are votes rather than percentages)

When we compare with responses from the 2013 survey, there is a clear shift towards content-led initiatives and a reduction in some tactics for example close to 50% said in 2013 that guest blogging was their staple tactic, in 2014 fewer than 15% listed it as one of their staple activities.

Another interesting bit of data is the fact that paid links have seen somewhat of a resurgence in popularity, presumably as companies look for tactics where they can maintain greater control. In 2013, just 5% listed paid links as their staple linking tactic whereas in 2014 over 13% reported paid linking and blog networks as one of their main link building tactics.

What is currently your biggest link building challenge?

Lack of scalability (time, process, training, spreading time between clients)

Avoiding Google penalties

These are similar challenges to those reported in 2013 in the sense that there is still concern over which links are helping and harming organic search performance as well as difficulties relating to processes and the lack of scalability.

The interesting thing is that SEO is full of challenges so as soon as one is overcome, the next appears. In 2013, 28% of respondents said that "finding link prospects" was a key challenge but this year not a mention of link prospects being an issue. This arguably suggests that we as an industry were adjusting to the "new world" back in 2013 and that now we have advanced our capabilities enough for this to now longer be the primary challenge in our day to day work. Now the main problem doesn't seem to be getting links as such but more about getting links into the pages that we all need to rank to stay in business … the money pages.

Which link building tactics do you believe to be most effective?

(numbers below are "votes" rather than percentages)

Which link building tactics do you believe to be least effective?

(numbers below are "votes" rather than percentages)

Which link building tactics do you consider to be harmful to a site?

(numbers below are "votes" rather than percentages)

See the complete visual below:

Thank you for everyone who took part in the survey! See you all again next year.

About JamesAgate —
James Agate is the founder of Skyrocket - a digital services provider.

90 Comments

James, thanks for taking the time to do this survey and publish the results here on Moz. I hope this comment will not seem too negative, but I think it's important to point out that the most important part of your survey (to me) is that it shows that too many people are focused on specific tactics rather than overall marketing strategy. The latter is only becoming more and more important as more and more "linkbuilding" tactics are hit by Google.

Again, this is just my opinion -- everyone else's mileage may vary. :)

Nutshell: The best linkbuilding is not something that you do. The best links come naturally as a result of doing good marketing. People should not build links; they should earn them. Those who focus on links are looking at trees rather than the forest.

When people ask me if they should do a particular activity to "build links," my response is: Would you take that action if Google did not exist? If the answer is "no," then I advise them not to do it.

Some thoughts on some of the tactics mentioned:

1. Content + outreach. Most of the time, this is just public relations by another name. As I wrote elsewhere on Moz, PR has always been the best way to build a brand and earn links.

2. Infographics. Is the purpose of a piece of this content just to get links, or is the content truly something valuable to the targeted audience?

3. Local citations, resource pages, and business directories. These can be very similar to bad directories. I'd advise that people ask themselves two questions about any potential listing: 1.) Is it a selective, curated list curated by a human expert; and 2.) Is it likely to send referral traffic -- do people actually visit this list? I would target a listing ONLY only if the answer to both questions is "yes."

4. Competitions and giveaways. Is a particular competition or giveaway a gimmick aimed only at getting links? If so, skip it.

5. Press Release Submissions. Um, no -- not after Panda 4.0, as Russ Jones wrote on Moz. Press releases have always been used to get coverage (that indirectly results in good links) and not links themselves.

6. Guest Posts. Is a person submitting short, crappy articles to numerous, random websites -- or is the person, as Jen Lopez put it on Moz -- guest blogging with a purpose? The best guest-posting strategy is again PR by another name (it's called "by-lined articles").

I agree. I pretty much have the same view Samuel. But I would only argue one point you made. The point about overall marketing strategy becoming more and more important. I don't think it is. I think that it has always been extremely important and remains so. For years, I have been so tired of people complaining about having to change SEO. I'm currently building a case that proves SEO has not changed in terms of best practices. Classic SEO is still alive and well. It's the stuff that enables Google to find, crawl, and index your site. Good Marketing (which results in good links) is the stuff that affects the metrics Google uses to rank sites. The only thing that has changed is the addition of tactics. For example, the canonical link element is a fairly new thing. I know I veerd off topic a little but I think we are seeing things in a similar light. great comment!

Hi Samuel, just wanted to weigh in with my two cents on some points you made. I half agree and half disagree..

I'm not sure why this study gave you the impression that people are pigeon holing themselves too deeply into individual tactics. 54% of the study declared that they spend less than half of their SEO budget on link building - the rest of it is surely going into some kind of marketing?

Link building is a marketing tactic and part of an overall web presence strategy. Like Cyrus Shepard said in the "Rules of Link Building" WBF, "At its best, link building is indistinguishable from good marketing." I say, even better is when PR minded link building outreach experts are intrinsically aligned with internal marketing efforts. That is when the real magic happens.

I really do agree with what you said on this. "PR has always been the best way to build a brand and earn links". It would seem however that there is something even better than just a PR agency, which is a PR focused link building outreach team. PR often times forgets the link, and just gets the brand mention. Many times I've executed link building campaigns with easy pickings, simply by outreaching to all the earned press that didn't go to the trouble of adding a link in the first place.

I also thought it was illuminating that Content + Outreach was the most voted effective tactic. This is another inception moment. Content + Outreach based link building is a multi-faceted strategy that can consist of many, many tactics. This is where a user first mentality brings you true wins. This is where you have the opportunity to help people, and actually make the web a better place for humans. I agree so much when you say infographics for links sake, or for people? PEOPLE, PLEASE!

When it comes to resource pages, directories, etc. This is what always blows my mind. The survey indicates that a huge problem for people is figuring out "which links will help, and which will hurt". It seems so blatantly obvious. Ask yourself, "Would this link really benefit the type of people that browse on this site?" If the answer is no, you have no business pursuing that link. However, if that link could drive referral traffic, if it is truly relevant, you bet your ass you ought to outreach to it. Not every link in your backlink portfolio needs to have ZERO influence from you.

Think about it. If you're a bison farm in Idaho, but you don't have a listing on a page like http://www.eatwild.com/products/idaho.html or http://www.bisoncentral.com/members/eloris-or-larr... why should you have to wait to magically appear? Shoot the webmasters a quick email, and get yourself a listing. If they CHOOSE to put your site up, then you have EARNED that link. They looked at your site, they felt you were reputable enough to endorse, and they gave you a link. That's an earned link, in my opinion. You just helped get the ball rolling with a simple friendly email. Not to mention, both of those sites show up on the first page of results for [idaho bison farms], and are of high domain authority.

"Is a particular competition or giveaway a gimmick aimed only at getting links? If so, skip it." Cough, Interflora, cough.

Press Release Submissions, urgh...

"The best guest posting strategy is PR by another name". Yep.

Well, those are my thoughts. Thank you James for putting together this excellent survey. Always interesting when link building comes up in Moz conversation. I have to say, I truly believe we are entering a golden era of link building *done right*.

Google's algorithms have advanced enough that it seems link building firms of today have no other option but to embrace a human first mentality.

I agree with you also and especially on that part. "I'm not sure why this study Gave you the feeling That people are pigeon holing Themselves too Deeply Into individual tactics 54% of the study Declared That They Spend less than half Their budget of SEO is link building - the rest of it is going Surely Into Some Kind of marketing "

I completely agree that being too focused on one or two tactics is not a good idea but I don't think there is anything wrong with operating at a tactical level if you have your eye on the bigger picture.

I'm not sure of the types of clients you work with but from my experience there are clients who can't just rely on "doing good marketing", in my opinion that mentality is frankly a pipe dream for many companies. Yes we could all pull out examples of sites doing great stuff and earning links as a result BUT for each one of those examples there are probably 100 sites who are doing all the right stuff but just aren't earning links - and probably aren't ranking.

Just as focusing on one tactic doesn't automatically get you burned by Google, doing great marketing doesn't automatically mean you rank well.

Saying things like "if Google didn't exist would you still do it" is all well and good until 4 months into an engagement your client isn't ranking and their competitor is. If we're SEOs (or it is part of our marketing role) then optimizing for search engines is surely the name of the game.

This survey needs to be taken in context, the sample respondents will be mixture of SMBs and corporates. Corporates have the big budgets to build great and booming websites, content and ongoing marketing, the SMBs don't so they resort to taking shortcuts that in turn increase breaching Google's guidelines.

At the moment the SERPs are an unfair playing field weighing on the side of the big spenders.

So the survey results are probably correct, if the question was asked to 100% corporates then no doubt the answers would be "we'll get links through a great site and off the back of strong offline marketing"

@SamuelScott - I'm really glad that you're acknowledging the value in press releases. I'm still a huge proponent of press release submissions, not necessarily for the link, but rather for the distribution, and possibility of a few more page 1 listings (especially for ORM clients).

I think it's a shame that the use of guest blogging is dwindling, especially since it offered a great opportunity for SEOs on smaller budgets to get their content on great sites. I think @williamharvey is definitely right about SERPs favoring firms with money

I may be in a minority, but I think this should often be the case. For a lot of queries, Google should favor big brands because they deserve to rank highly because they have established, authoritative brands.

If I search for "best Tel Aviv restaurants," I want the SERPs to show the top ten restaurants that people here in Tel Aviv actually think are the best restaurants -- and NOT the restaurants that have optimized the most for keywords and built the most links and all of that.

If a company does not want to pay to market itself and build a brand, I have to ask: Should it even be in business in the first place?

Hi Samuel, I don't think you can rely on the natural, 'link attraction' approach for all industries. You have to 'force' the issue with content outreach and guest posting. Insurance, gambling, airport parking, niche b2b...there are several spaces where you have to be really direct and pro-active with your link building. These industries don't really lend themselves to shareable content, and they don't have big online communities to market to.

Lots of good info here, and some surprising or even startling takeaways.

First, no one's spending more than $50,000 a month but 70% or so will increase spending. What I find alarming is how much of this spending is being directed toward link building. Folks, this is like spending all your time and money advertising an empty store. If you're not spending equal to or more on your own content then why should I even bother visiting you? What value do you have for me...links to what the other guy's doing? Most serious companies will have people on the payroll figuring that out already.

Next, guest posts. Am I the only one seeing a huge marketing opportunity for savvy folks? I mean, 9% of people think this is important? Thank you Matt Cutts for your gift from heaven! I love, absolutely love, that so many think guest posting is bad. I guess the question now is, is your site one that will suffer because your fear of guest posts outweighs your common sense toward them?

Great to see Broken Link Building so high up the list - I've had a few good successes with it recently.

Content is definitely the most 'natural' way of building links these days. Paid content shouldn't be harmful if it's done right, but you always run the risk!

Infographics are something that, if done properly, can be an incredibly powerful link building source. Done badly however, and they're just a massive drain on time and money ... be careful out there Mozers!

Considering Google has gone after infographics, I would be worried about that approach in general. More importantly, it drives me crazy to see BLB separated from general content outreach. Once you have reached out to your broken link prospects, your content should be good enough to reach out to non broken link prospects with general outreach!

Thanks for publishing the results of the survey. It is amazing that in this day and age that so much % of spend for SEO is still for link building. Clearly is a sign that links (for whatever variety is popular today) are still a very strong ranking signal.

Do you think that "Content + Outreach" being the top most effective strategy is a function of only those who took the survey, or more indicative of the overall SEO industry?

Nice Survey about the Link Building in 2014. Content Marketing is now a big part of our link building campaigns because Google want natural links and to get natural links we need to create something special so that others webmasters or editors can link to our content. That's how real link building works.

Great infographic and explanation! The link building tactics considered during survey provide useful and future insight for SEO that what is going to be harmful for the site. It would help marketers to change their link building strategy.

If one technique is working for my website, It does not mean it will work for other website. So it varies completely. The people have different views about SEO. One say that Vedio marketing dead if it is not working for him. It is true in SEO industry.

Many a person still getting the results from some article directories for long time. Commenting is still good technique but it depends on you, what is the way of doing. These are some interesting views of SEOs guys. Awesome work James!!

Presumably this indicates that opinion on paid links is simply highly polarised - there may be no overlap between those who described paid links as harmful and those who were ramping up their usage of paid links.

If we (reasonably) assume that spending more on link building is not the same as spending more on paid links, in over 300 respondents there were 22 users who said they used paid links, 19 who said they were effective and 44 who said they were harmful. Assuming heavy overlap between the 19 and the 22, I don't find it too hard to believe that the 44 fell in the other ~280 respondents.

I guess my point is more about ratios though: 19 said paid links were "most effective," just 13 said they were "least effective." 22 said paid links were "utilized most often." And then at the end 44 say it's "most dangerous." It's just an odd mix of data.

Very mixed reactions, even "pro paid links" if you look at the data from afar (except for the knowledge of danger aspect at the end). I'm surprised to hear that many respondents still giving paid links that sort of chance.

Unless of course, they're referring to services like Taboola as a "paid link." That could be a different story. Thanks for helping me break this down though, Tom. :)

I personally put it down to executives/owners losing patience with the back and forth of modern-day SEO, by that I mean:

Tactic A being within the guidelines, then not.

Link B being fine last year but not now.

Budget being allocated to link "building" last year and link "removal" last year.

My suspicion is that people opt for riskier tactics in a more controlled manner so at least they know where they stand with paid links and as such can act accordingly. For example they may be pointing links at microsites, 2nd tier properties or whatever.

With all the craziness in the world of SEO, it is easy to see why, to an outsider, a paid link would be very appealing.

Yeah, given the respondents' job titles I can see some people opting for the "quick win" approach even if it's done with a knowing that the strategy could backfire. I'll never understand that approach, but it does make sense given who's answering these questions.

What percentage of your overall SEO budget is allocated toward building links? I would put ours at the low end of 26-50%.

Would you say you've increased or decreased your spend on link building over the past 12 months? Decreased actually and yes the extra dollars have been shifted into content marketing strategies.

In the next 12 months, will you look to increase or decrease your spend on link building? Probably decrease, but its hard to gauge this. More will go into content and social, but both of those still result in links being built... better links too if you ask me.

Which link building tactics do you utilize most often? Content & Outreach with some infographics. It troubles me that you had so many people list forum, link wheels, sbms...yikes.

What is currently your biggest link building challenge? Generating interest and gaining relevant links. You can only go so far leveraging your own connections.

Which link building tactics do you believe to be most effective? Content & Outreach for sure. Blog networks too, but those frighten me.

Which link building tactics do you believe to be least effective? Tie: Article directories, forum profiles, web directories, social bookmarks, and link wheels

Which link building tactics do you consider to be harmful to a site? See above.

I completely agree about article directory links being harmful. I've had pages that recovered once I removed the article directory link (it was ezine). It's almost as though G has decided that you get a penalty just having links from those places.

Well James, I appreciate this insight about link building. You really enlightened a dark view about link building. Best practices are still alive, but one more thing awkward to me is when content + outreach is one of top techniques in this survey then why guest blogging(an outreach example) is vanishing today.

You might have done a quite lot of research while developing this post. I agree with most of the ideas. I mostly deal with local citation building and content + outreach. Find it interesting the percentage of effectiveness they provide in current SEO.

No doubt, infographic is very effective to understand the fact of backlinks. The best part of the article is - it is done by the industry specialists. I hope it will help lots of Online Marketing Professionals to create strategies how to get backlinks.

To me I rarely worry about Google or Links. I always prefer creating user interactive and sales (convincing) contents and focus my effort on building links mostly by writing blogs on Free blog sites, forums, local listings, classified ads, and most importantly social media sites. To me I had always noted a bounce in ranking performance on the websites I take up. To me I am doing the same practice even before Penguin update. Frankly to speak I will not change my content centered Promotional strategy even if Google outlaws contents and supports link spamming, for Google is not my only focus just one of my front line focus.

Well its not much suprising for me to see quality content is at the top most(69%) followed link building strategy by many of us!! And I would love to give more insight over the benefits of having it as a top prefrence,

1. Gain more credibility with search engines. The order in which search engines display websites in their search results is based on a long list of factors, with quality content being near the top of the list. That’s because quality content helps to ensure your site’s credibility from the search engine's point of view. Search engines have been trying to fight off spam and sketchy search engine optimization techniques for years, but lately they’ve stepped up these efforts significantly. This means it is no longer about how many keywords you can fit in a paragraph. Today, factors such as spelling, grammar, readability, and relevance have a greater impact on how search engines rate your site.

2. Provide better customer service. Making sure your content is relevant and original is a 21st century extension of your customer service. Visitors want to find what they are looking for on your site, and they want to find it quickly. If your site is full of keywords that have you ranking well, but have no meaning, your visitors will get discouraged and move on to one of your competitors. Make sure each page has content related to the title of that page as well as your overall business.

3. Reach a larger online audience. If visitors find your content to be relevant, they are a much more likely to share it. “Going viral” is a term often used to describe something that becomes popular through internet sharing. The originality of your content is what will make visitors want to share it with others. The process of “going viral” allows the word about your business to spread quickly with little to no costs associated with it. As more and more people consuming your content, you will have the opportunity to change these consumers into customers and generate sales.

The whole point of the info-graphic/article wasn't to discuss best tactics, just which were commonly used in 2014. Needless to say the most-used tactics aren't necessarily the best, it's just that sometimes the client/situation requires pragmatism in the short to mid term. If you want more linkbuilding resources search the blog.

This survey is very interesting to understand the behavior of different actors. What seems weird is that everyone continues to use web directories to reference a site despite the danger announced. This remains an easy short term best directories but dangerous in the long term.

However, to have an "organic" links profile, it's important to vary the sources: blogs, forums, ... are spaces where there are discussions and therefore potentially useful links for example. The most important is to respect the thematic.

This is fantastic. I am especially pleased to see Broken Link Building begin to move its way up in the hierarchy of tactics used by SEOs. When executed correctly, BLB can be both completely whitehat and effective. Frankly, it is the most excited white hat link building tactic with which I am familiar.

Great infographic and it's great to see the opinions of other people in the SEO industry. I will say that content + outreach has been the best strategy I've seen work also. While people may have different interpretations of what content + outreach may exactly mean, I see it as creating a piece of content (app, article, infographic, etc.) that is valuable to your target market. Now, you could create something amazing that could totally reshape your vertical, but if no one can find it then it isn't going to do you or anyone else any good. Thus, you must outreach your content...which is very easy to do if you've created something of value because everyone will want it. If you are having trouble, then you should probably re-evaluate your content. The hardest part is creating valuable content because you really need to understand the interests and pain points of the target market to figure out what they want.

I agree - If you are a small or mid sized company with an e-commerce site nobody is going to find your content unless you do outreach (ie link building) to let people know about it. Surprising to see companies create dozens or hundreds of videos and/or content and just let it sit - and that is exactly what it does - it just sits. That is a waste of thousands of $$.

Just like in life natural is the way to go and the top 5 most effective ways to link build really show just that. It all starts with quality content that can be spread, and at my company not all clients are going to have material worth spreading, so that point you move down the list. In terms of what is being spent, it should be just part of the process of providing quality SEO for websites in my opinion. Thank you for all of this information and insight into what people are choosing to do for link building and the success that they are having.

"Link building" is such an ambiguous term! Some forms are actually dead or toxic, other forms are quite valuable and necessary for any online marketing strategy. In fact, even content marketing now that I think about it is a form of link building. You don't write great content without the hopes of getting some links from it.

Thanks for putting the time and effort into creating the survey, James.

What I am wondering is whether the quality of the links really increses proportionally to the spending of larger amounts of money on linkbuilding.

I am also surprised that particular tactics which the survey found to be not especially effective (guest posts are the last on the list of the "most effective" tactics), or even those considered "harmful" (paid links) got so many votes in the "most commonly utilized tactics" section.

Great survey and I have a point for those who think that article directories are harmful for a website. I think if you putting high quality content to good pr article websites then there is no harm in that.

Thank you for sharing the great results. As Rand always says, Linkbuilding will always be an important factor in SEO and as the Inbound marketers and it's our job to invent new link building strategies with time.

James, I'd like to know as the founder of one of the finest SEO company, how do you respond when your client or an agency that intend to outsource you their work asks you to share your linkbuilding strategy? Is it alright to put your effort without going to any kind of contract?

I wouldn't worry too much about giving your strategies to clients, after all many are just looking for assurance that you'll do what they want

If a client has a $5k budget for links do they want you to do content and outreach, can that content be placed on their site or a micro site, do you buy links or hire others. What quality controls do you have in place to make sure you're not breaching guidelines or doing anything the client might not like?

If you look on James's site and even on some of his guest articles for Moz etc you will see he is quite open about how he operates and the assurances he offers to clients who might want to be discreet.

You know what i didnt see mentioned at all in this amazing post? Social media and influencers. This to me is one of the most important tactics in link building in 2014. By finding the people who control the blogs and the social media profiles, interacting with them and building relationships, you can create an ally who will build links for you and promote your product for years to come. Building a list of influencers is the first step. Once you have done that you need to find ways to connect with these people on their level. This is why pr is becoming so important to SEO. It is really all about doing solid outreach now and promoting amazing content. With great PR you can make this happen. I will say, many companies are still buying links. I recently did a backlink analysis on our main competitors. The ones who were ranking better for specific terms where there because of paid links, home page links on websites they had built or just general old SEO linking practices. None of them have penalties, all of them still rank well. This actually makes me a little upset. We are a whitehat company, we work hard to create excellent content and promote it and people are still winning with paid links. Google will never catch them all. So what do you do?

Great post and Thanks for sharing the results of this survey. No doubt, content+outreach is an and will be an all time SEO strategy. I also agree to some comments that SEO hasn't really changed. Only thing which is still true is you need to good at your core competencies. One can achieve that either through value addition through content or other forms mentioned above. I'm unaware if broken link building g can be of any help in future. Follow the best practices and unfollow shortcuts to gain visibility in search engines.

Awesome post James! All of the information and graphics were quite interesting. Curious if you have seen a tendency for companies in the various spending tiers concentrate on certain tactics? For example, what type of link building is a company spending 1k doing vs. one spending 50k. Hope all is well with you!

Directory post don't work any more. Bookmark and forum posting is still very very important for SEO..... & yes content is the king. I don't have good idea on infographics... every one is talking about infographics. Thanks for your detail info and also for your infographic. :)

Nice research and another reason to paddle your own canoe. Everyone in SEO is driven by experience. If it worked for you, you vote for it. If the other guy got slapped for doing it, he will do something else. In the end, you have to find your own way. Not even those within the Great and Powerful Moz agree on all tactics at all times.

I think you are jumping to conclusions. Companies adjust spends for MANY reasons. Also the definition of "link building" is broad in this case. Companies could be shifting more towards user experience and engagement or a multitude of other things. The MAJOR take-away here is that link-building remains a major source of budget spend as well as the prediction that it will increase going into late 2014 and early 2015.

That would disagree with your statement and elude that companies are diversifying their spends although still maintaining faith that link-building retains value. (which it does)